Glacially modeled snow job

As snowfall varies with the seasons, the flow of ice speeds up and slows down.

Besides, it isn’t real data, but just another modeling scenario tweaked for a particular outcome. I had to laugh at this quote:

“We now know that snowfall in Antarctica will not save us from sea-level rise,”

More ice loss through snowfall on Antarctica

Stronger snowfall increases future ice discharge from Antarctica. Global warming leads to more precipitation as warmer air holds more moisture – hence earlier research suggested the Antarctic ice sheet might grow under climate change. Now a study published in Nature shows that a lot of the ice gain due to increased snowfall is countered by an acceleration of ice-flow to the ocean. Thus Antarctica’s contribution to global sea-level rise is probably greater than hitherto estimated, the team of authors from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) concludes.

“Between 30 and 65 percent of the ice gain due to enhanced snowfall in Antarctica is countervailed by enhanced ice loss along the coastline,” says lead-author Ricarda Winkelmann. For the first time, an ensemble of ice-physics simulations shows that future ice discharge is increased up to three times because of additional precipitation in Antarctica under global warming. “The effect exceeds that of surface warming as well as that of basal ice-shelf melting,” Winkelmann says.

During the last decade, the Antarctic ice-sheet has lost volume at a rate comparable to that of Greenland. “The one certainty we have about Antarctica under global warming is that snowfall will increase,” Winkelmann explains. “Since surface melt might remain comparably small even under strong global warming, because Antarctica will still be a pretty chilly place, the big question is: How much more mass within the ice sheet will slowly but inexorably flow off Antarctica and contribute to sea-level rise, which is one of the major impacts of climate change.”

Since snowfall on the ice masses of Antarctica takes water out of the global water cycle, the continent’s net contribution to sea-level rise could be negative during the next 100 years – this is what a number of global and regional models suggest. The new findings indicate that this effect to a large extent is offset by changes in the ice-flow dynamics. Snow piling up on the ice is heavy and hence exerts pressure – the higher the ice the more pressure. Because additional snowfall elevates the grounded ice-sheet but less so the floating ice shelves, it flows more rapidly towards the coast of Antarctica where it eventually breaks off into icebergs and elevates sea level.

A number of processes are relevant for ice-loss in Antarctica, most notably to sub-shelf melting caused by warming of the surrounding ocean water. These phenomena explain the already observed contribution to sea-level rise.

“We now know that snowfall in Antarctica will not save us from sea-level rise,” says second author Anders Levermann, research domain co-chair at PIK and a lead author of the sea-level change chapter of the upcoming IPCC’s 5th assessment report. “Sea level is rising – that is a fact. Now we need to understand how quickly we have to adapt our coastal infrastructure; and that depends on how much CO2 we keep emitting into the atmosphere,” Levermann concludes.

The press release is at war with itself. The most significant statement in it, IMHO:

“Since snowfall on the ice masses of Antarctica takes water out of the global water cycle, the continent’s net contribution to sea-level rise could be negative during the next 100 years – this is what a number of global and regional models suggest.”

By the way, it’s a good time of year to buy your pals a book about climate.

“Since snowfall on the ice masses of Antarctica takes water out of the global water cycle…”

It is the amount of surface area exposed to evaporation of the global bodies of water that determines how much water participates in the global water cycle. Rising sea levels increase this quantity. There is also sublimation.

BTW, I see I cleverly linked the Kindle version. It is fun and easy to give Kindle books as gifts. All you need is your friend’s e-mail address, the knowledge that they’re a Kindle reader, and you’re good to go. Want to send them paper anyway? I understand.

“…the higher the ice the more pressure. Because additional snowfall elevates the grounded ice-sheet but less so the floating ice shelves, it flows more rapidly towards the coast of Antarctica where it eventually breaks off into icebergs and elevates sea level.”
=====
I can’t follow this. Are they saying that Antarctic ice is already at a maximum so any additional snow will cause the ice underneath to flow into the sea? Has the ice on Antarctica ever been higher than it is today? If so, what kept it from flowing into the sea then? Does excess CO2 in the air make the ice more slippery? I’m really at a loss to understand the logic behind their conclusions.

Papers like this are why I don’t bother to read Nature anymore–it has lost all scientific credibility by publishing such nonsense. The authors apparently didn’t bother to check the temperature records at the South Pole and Vostok, which go back to 1957 and show no warming whatsoever over the past 55 years. If I understand the AGW arguments, sea levels are rising because the Antarctic ice sheet is melting away, and it’s also rising because the ice sheet is growing? That’s right up there with “the hotter it gets, the colder it will be!”

The Antarctic ice is growing because of its positive mass balance (more snow or less ablation). If snowfall has increased, it isn’t because of warming because there hasn’t been any.

Usually when I read an article and have no clue what the author is talking about, the article is heavy in math, but this article is just bizzare. They seem to be saying if it snows more the glaciers just calve icebergs faster because the snow weighs down the ice. Then they say it’s snowing more because of global warming and the warm air holds more moisture, yet that doesn’t make any sense to me because as the warm moist air moves south along the surface from the horse lattitudes toward the polar region where it rises at high latitudes in the vicinity of 60 degrees, dumping the moisture as rain and release vast amounts of heat into the upper atmosphere above the CO2 saturation level, which cools the temperate regons. The rising air cools and dehydrates, then returns to the surface over the poles; therefore no matter how warm the Earth gets, the air is unlikely to bring additional snow fall over Antarctica, and that’s why Antarctica is a desert.

Antarctica, on average, is the coldest, driest, and windiest continent, and has the highest average elevation of all the continents.[4] Antarctica is considered a desert, with annual precipitation of only 200 mm (8 inches) along the coast and far less inland. Antarctica

With an annual precipitation of 200 mm, I wouldn’t be surprised if the glacers didn’t have sublimatation as their primary albation mechanism.

That’s the equation all glaciers obey (along with practically everything else unless approaching the speed of light). If they don’t, then there’s horseplay at work.

My rock mechanics professor began each lecture with that simple equation then derived the day’s lesson from it, which was fascinating in and of itself. A stiff course in rock mechanics derived from this simple yet elegant equation would do these “theoretical glacial climatologists” a lot of good.

Add to that a lesson in logic and more research on the topic would likely change some of their conclusions, but their big stumbling block is that CO2 has caused this warming. Everywhere in the geologic record does it show warming increases the level of CO2; nowhere does it show that CO2 causes the warming.

“Since snowfall on the ice masses of Antarctica takes water out of the global water cycle, the continent’s net contribution to sea-level rise could be negative during the next 100 years – this is what a number of global and regional models suggest…”

“Thus Antarctica’s contribution to global sea-level rise is probably greater than hitherto estimated, the team of authors from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) concludes…”

……………………..

What they mean “greater contribution”? Greater negative?

Never mind. Anyway, Ricarda is such a sweet mice in her red jacket on the pristine white antarctic snow!

“A number of processes are relevant for ice-loss in Antarctica, most notably to sub-shelf melting caused by warming of the surrounding ocean water. These phenomena explain the already observed contribution to sea-level rise.”
One has to wonder if they ever rehearse or practise these articles/speeches/hypothesis/dream-time-theories in the mirror, it would at least give them some indication on how ridiculous they really sound. It is a typical example of an article, with the bets going both ways but zero on the winner. Cognitive dissonance is an affliction granted to these type of almost-thinkers. The rationale of their presented argument does not stand any scrutiny at all. I am absolutely amazed and flabbergasted about how anyone can get their thinking processes so completely befuddled.
If it was a child, you would send it to it’s room for being silly.

Disturbing to hear that a PIK employee is lead author of the sea-level change chapter of the upcoming IPCC’s 5th assessment report, despite the Interacademy Report

“called upon the IPCC to develop policies governing conflict of interest, including
intellectual conflicts of interest in which Lead Authors are in a position of reviewing their own
work, or have revealed through speeches, public statements or writings that they hold “fixed
positions”.”

This is good, almost as coherent as saying CO2 emissions from Asia cause cooling, I smell an attempt to explain the sea ice expansion around the antarctic continent, by the most bizarre reasoning .
Glowball warming causes more snow, more snow(by weight) causes ice to flow to sea faster, ice flows calving into sea cause sea ice to grow(cause it can’t escape? melt? Pinned by manmade wind?) Sea ice expansion makes continent colder.And makes the ocean colder.
Ergo…. AGW causes Antarctic ice to grow.
Death is too good for these shaman impersonating grant suckers.
Trade them to North Korea?

I beg to differ. This is a major scientific discovery. Winkelmann et al have proposed the perfect mechanism to underpin Lovelock’s self-regulating Gaia hypothesis. The more the glacier grows the more it self-destroys. A genius of simplicity. No more mysterious planetary consciousness required.

I have no great problems with the sub-hypotheses and assumptions – nature does cycles – but the whole matter depends on the accurate measurement over long times of a large number of variables. It’s the type of scenario where a small error in one assumption can upset the whole apple cart. For example, in mining we use principal component stress analysis to predict rock burst; but an offshoot of that type of study is that I require much persuasion that the addition of a century of ice at the South Pole will have any measurable effect on the pressure at the base of the pile, however defined. Like, you can take a brick from a big brick wall and it not fall down or seem any different at the top.
I’m still waiting for someone from PIK to state in clear, unequivocal terms that no disconformity or unconformity has been identified in the extant ice layers, especially near the South Pole. It does not have to be the easily-recognised angular type, just a hiatus in deposition. This is important, not only for historical calibration, but also because the absence of a disconformity would indicate that the near-Pole ice has not melted before in the 700,000 years or so that are claimed to be measured in drill holes. I’m optimistic enough to think that 700,000 years of history is unlikely to be upturned at precisely the year in time that experts write their opus magnums.
Also, I keep wondering what climate existed at the bottom of these deep ice holes when the ice pile started to grow. Was it bare rock and warmish, was it sea near freezing, or was there already an accumulation of several km of ice that has long been moving down and out. Any evidence for conditions there in the past?

I’ve come to the conclusion these extremists are all robots.We’ve been taken over by robots. Or aliens. Something that doesn’t think, doesn’t feel, doesn’t consider any other way. Brainwashed or programmed, I guess it’s the same thing. Maybe possessed. How do we snap them out of it? Stronger coffee? A slap upside the head? A group hug? What?

Humour was the first thing to go, then any consideration for others, up to and including acceptance of thousands of deaths to cold, soon more to hunger – let’s not get to the firing squads. Now they’ve stopped thinking. I suppose they have to in self-defence. I mean, how could they bear to? They’d self-destruct.

Is the restriction of CO2 so important to them that they’re willing to give up being HUMAN? The sad thing is, I think some really are, you know? Some are willing to sacrifice not only themselves but their own families and all of humanity. So here is another crime in all this mess – that someone has come along and very delibately taught these people to self-hate, to turn them into tools, into robots, into aliens. It must be so horrible inside their heads, seeing only the dark side, knowing only hatred and fear. Those poor sorrowful hopeless people, all of them.

john robertson You have discovered the explanation for growing Antarctic Ice causing sea level increase! The Sea Ice that grows causes more sea water to be displaced then the the water that that was removed to create the ice. So the sea level rises. See I can be a Climate Scientist too. ;-) pg

BTW, if my post (above) seemed a bit off topic, my point was that these same people keep pumping out these same reports, based on the same weak science or no science. They KNOW their models are faulty. They’ve known that for years. And, while they are in it for the money, they must KNOW that roll-on effect is catastrophic for civilization and all of humankind. They KNOW what they are doing. When are they going to face up to themselves?

“Between 30 and 65 percent of the ice gain due to enhanced snowfall in Antarctica is countervailed by enhanced ice loss along the coastline,” Unless basic percentage maths has changed since I was at secondary school (college) 50 years ago, then it follows that 35-70% of the enhanced snow-fall accretes and adds to ice gain, taking water out of the oceans. Anyway you look at it, it’s a net gain for the frozen waste. Don’t they teach logic or maths at warmist school any more?

As Don Easterbrook says: “The authors apparently didn’t bother to check the temperature records at the South Pole and Vostok, which go back to 1957 and show no warming whatsoever over the past 55 years.” Surely this must worry both the editors of Nature and those funding the work. All they have to ask is for the authors to produce the empirical data supporting their claims about Antarctic temperature history. What the hell is happening to science these days?

Actually it’s not because of CO2. The real warming started when Daylight Saving Time was instituted. All that extra Daylight gets turned into heat and that has to go somewhere. The really scary part is that extra hour 7 months of the year is actually depleting the sun’s energy about 2.4% faster! This means the sun will run out of energy a lot sooner than we planned, and then we will really have a problem to deal with!

Are their hindcasts compatible with earth orientation parameter & oblateness records?
(These are rigid constraints. My guess is they ignore inconvenient observed aggregate constraints. Nobody wants to get caught suggesting violations of the laws of large numbers and conservation of angular momentum.) This press release smells particularly foul & corrupt. In order for mainstream institutions to maintain the trust of sensible members of the public, this work should be audited by capable parties with lucid awareness of aggregate constraints. (Paywalls also don’t help with maintaining public trust.)

We better hope the volume of ice on Antarctica doesn’t grow appreciably. As we know, the earth wobbles on its axis. Due to centrifugal force, the more weight accumulated off-axis will logically increase the wobble. In time, this will cause the earth to explode and the pieces go flying off in all directions. That could spoil your whole day.
/sarc off

They’ve discovered a maximum amount of ice that can be supported by a continent after which it slides off? And with that scientific discovery, they can predict that at some point in the fuiture that almost all of the ice will fall of Antarctica due to unstoppable global warming and those of us not already fried will drown. Doesn’t sound all that scientific and full of crevices.

A.D Everard, NO you are not off topic, there is little evidence of science, the scientific method or rational thinking about the planet and its weather systems.
All of the above seem to be cover, a cloak for a humourless self hating bunch. Persons so afraid, that they must control everything and everyone.
The CRU emails woke me up, the unease I was developing about the UN-IPCC and CAGW as I observed the battles for data exposed at Climate Audit& WUWT.
Also from my personal inability to access empirical science that supported the UN’s conjecture.
I would have called you a conspiracy nut, if you had told me what was in the contrast between the IPCC-FAR, the endless press statements from the team and the CRU emails.
Since late 2009 I have been in the grip of a growing anger, the alarm sounding crew are devious and foolish. After near 30 years of “The sky is falling because of our sin of civilized living”, all the deliberate falsehoods and attacks on our society these UN clowns and enablers probably believe they can just fade away and keep their ill-gotten gains and or pensions.
Guess we will see.

grumpyoldmanuk completely nailed it. The press release is at war with itself.
If only 30-65 % of the mass gain from increased snowfall is balanced by increased loss, that
means the ice gains mass. Period.

I read this a couple of times and can’t understand it. Based on the article It seems that if it stopped snowing in Antarctica the glaciers would grow ever and ever bigger? or am i meant to conclude that whatever happens the glaciers are all going to rush into the sea and we’ll all drown

“Between 30 and 65 percent of the ice gain due to enhanced snowfall in Antarctica is countervailed by enhanced ice loss along the coastline”

As Penny on Big Bang Theory would say, “Holy crap on a cracker!”

I was a glaciology student. Okay, I have an edge. A very little edge. As Anthony says, the author of the above comment (at least) fails on the concept. Since the snowfall comes from the ocean (the first principle), 35 – 70% of the increased, held (short-term) snowfall means a LOWERING of sea-level.

The second principle of glaciology that appears lost on all climate warmists is that glaciers move because the accumulated weight (force) of ice causes the solid (ice) to become plastic and flow. All glaciers, ice masses that move, are by definition unstable: they will continue to “thin-out” until the weight (causing flowage) is equal to the resistive pressures of friction and crystalline rigidity. Glacial movement does not indicate climate change, warming weather at all, but the current result of an earlier, historical period in which the rate of mass additions exceeded the rate of melting, sublimation and plastic flow.

There is still a third principle of glaciology that is lost on climate warmists: that all glacial mass reductions are attributable to three processes:

1) plastic flowage that terminates in the ocean or large lakes (so that calving occurs and movement to warmer climes),

2) sublimation, and

3) melting.

All glacial mass increases are due to one process: snowfall.

Greenland and Antarctica lose glacial mass year-to-year ONLY IF the rate of loss is greater than the rate of gain. Of the three methods of ice mass, only two are in any way related to warming. Melting is an obvious result of warming, but as most of the continental ice volumes are in areas which are below zero for most of the year, you can easily determine the change of amount of ice potentially melted, IF YOU CONCLUDE that thermal conductivity of ice is low. Ratio delta ice melt = delta temp increase X ratio delta time above melting X 1/heat of solid-liquid state change.

I say, IF YOU CONCLUDE, because the second method of ice loss, increased plastic flowage to the sea, claimed by warmists to be significant, assumes a high thermal conductivity to ice. Only if the general ice mass has warmed can increases in flowrate be attributed to warming, but this consideration reduces the potential for melting (as heat is conducted into the lower zones rather than used to effect a state change). So plastic flowage and melting are opposing considerations, in that you cannot pump for one while pumping for the other. There is only so much energy around.

Sublimation, while impacted by warming, is only marginally impacted by warming when you are hovering around zero. Sublimation is only a real force when sunshine is strong under dry atmospheric conditions. The more you make water vapour rise, the less sublimation occurs, especially if you think more water vapour leads to more clouds (which reduces sunshine getting to the glacier).

With all the above considerations, what really causes loss of glacial mass is the non-deposition of replacement snow. Since the existing glacial flow is a function not of recent ice gain, but of historical gain, you must be very careful in attributing glacial net ice loss to current conditions: you first must determine that current snowfall is not significantly less than historical amounts.

I do not believe this has been determined. If winter precipitation has dropped below historical levels, then you have, like Kilamanjaro, a problem not of warming, but of precipitation sourcing.

So far I have heard absolutely zero increase in iceberg activity. The large shelves don’t count. They break off all the time, and do not contribute to sea-levels. We need to see icebergs increasing. And we still need to talk about replacement snow.

“Glacier speed can vary from virtually at rest to a kilometer or more per year. On average, though, glaciers move at the laggardly pace of a couple hundred feet per year. In general, a heavier glacier moves quicker than a lighter one, a steep glacier quicker than a less steep one, a warmer glacier quicker than a cooler one.”

So, just how much glacier ice (deposited in the last 30 years of supposed global warming) is getting MOVED into the oceans around Antarctica? Sea ice – and Antarctic sea ice is newly frozen every year, meled every summer – avcerages 1-1.5 meters thick. So one square km of sea ice = 1000 meters x 1000 meters x 1 meter thick. 10^6 cubic meters of ice. A glacier is (perhaps, or at most) 30 meters thick when it calves off and falls in the ocean. (Glaciers – at their tips – are NOT 1 meter thick. Few are 10 meters thick.) Glaciers are the width of their spawning valley (maybe 1 km wide at the most) it is the massive ice caps that are 100 to 1000 km wide. And THOSE do not “flow” to the sea. They are static,rarely breaking off; and when they do break off, they don’t break apart and spread out. they stay in massive thick island of ice. Those “islands” of ice DON’T spread out and increase sea ice extents!

Seems to me that – at MOST – about a 30 km “length” of glacier valley “ice” could be moved to the coast, and almost all of that was ice that was created hundreds (thousands) of years ago and is getting “moved” by ice + compressed snow getting deposited on top of the old ice.

Now, if today’s sea ice is 1,000,000 square to 1,500,000 square kilometers LARGER than any previous records for antarctic sea ice, then – if as these “scientist” apparently want us to believe – that new sea ice is coming (largely ?) from glacier snow newly deposited on top of old glacier ice that is moving less than 1 km per year towards the ocean edge …..

Where is the “new” sea ice coming from ?

The numbers PROVE it is NOT able to come from the glaciers previously attached to the rocks and contient of Antarctica.

How smart do you have to be to assert that an increased ice flow that’s caused by a thicker, deeper, land-based ice sheet will raise sea levels? Seriously, I want to know how someone can make such an assertion.

My theory: years of public education grade inflation and University pH.D peddling are coming home to roost.

“Since snowfall on the ice masses of Antarctica takes water out of the global water cycle, the continent’s net contribution to sea-level rise could be negative during the next 100 years – this is what a number of global and regional models suggest. The new findings indicate that this effect to a large extent is offset by changes in the ice-flow dynamics.”

Models fighting models. I wonder if we can model the outcome of the discrepancy between the models…

The more you learn, the more you know
The more you know, the more you forget
The more you forget, the less you know

That must have been the first lesson they’ve learnt, but have already forgottent what it was about, so they reckon it’s related to snow, for a single letter should not matter much and that’s where the money comes from anyway. Is that clear?

I understand it, the more the entire planet warms (only the planet has not continued to warm since the cold war ended), and the more ice from Antarctica that melts as it evaporates into the atmosphere then the more it falls back as snow and ice on Antarctica. I understand that! Why is it, if it’s too cold for snow does Antarctica have all that frozen water? Maybe it was so warm Antarctica gained a lot of snow? or maybe the cold temperatures freeze H20. I see a catch 22 on the horizon.

Well, call me when they do studies of previous sea levels much higher than we have today. Call me when they go to California to study the visible high stands. Call me when they realize sea level was much higher than today before the last glaciation began. It seems to me that some ‘scientists’ believe that sea level should be a static thing.

Even a warmist I saw on tv a few weeks ago after Sandy said sea level would not be rising as quickly as previously thought but even a millimeter a year or so alarmed him and he said we ‘have to prepare’. They simply cannot let go.

Syl says:
December 18, 2012 at 6:52 am
…..Even a warmist I saw on tv a few weeks ago after Sandy said sea level would not be rising as quickly as previously thought but even a millimeter a year or so alarmed him and he said we ‘have to prepare’. They simply cannot let go.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Boy is that evidence that they have ZERO math and science background. (A millimeter is about the same as three (female) fingernail thicknesses.) I am sure this guy thinks of a millimeter as about a foot or at least an inch (25.4 millimeters) or is hoping the audience is so ill-educated that THEY equate millimeters with meters or feet or at least inches .